


Criticality

by Sinpie_Senpai



Series: Fanfics written for Fayren's OCs [5]
Category: Robots & Lace, Robots - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Police, Author needs sleep, Gen, Murder Mystery, no beta we die like men, totally didn’t whip it up in the last 5 hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23432788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinpie_Senpai/pseuds/Sinpie_Senpai
Summary: The first of many.
Relationships: Valence/Ratio
Series: Fanfics written for Fayren's OCs [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1374169
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Criticality

**Author's Note:**

> Not the first of many chapters folks. I’m going to hibernate for 50 years now.
> 
> Characters aren't mine. This is a (late) birthday present written for [Sarah](https://twitter.com/fayren?s=09) using her OCs on her blog [Robots & Lace](https://twitter.com/robots_and_lace?s=09). Can be read as a standalone.
> 
> Happy birthday, Sarah.

Another body.

Sighing, Ratio raises her handheld scanner up and the bright blue ray sweeps across the mangled robot on her table. Her tablet gives a ding as it returns the result.

“Model SV-700-05, produced 2 years ago by Marc.Co, registered to Mr. Joseph Gonzales.” Basic information, not important. Ratio could already tell the model the moment she saw it. “Damage report!” She orders.

_“Missing voice box. Noticeable scratches on the right side of the face plate, and on the chest plate. Fluid vessels leaking at point 5, point 13, point 56. Multiple deformities on the body case. Deactivated due to severe damage to the spine and components inside the abdomen.”_

“Access memories!”

“ _Unable to access memories. System corrupted!”_

“Request access to black box, special permission 87-392-09, Detroit Police Department!”

“ _Registered user: [...] Ratio, Station 99’s engineer, Detroit Police Department. Please confirm!_ ”

“Confirmed!”

 _“Voice matched! Access granted!”_ The program loads, and then returns an error. “ _Unable to replay black box. Data corrupted!”_

“Same results as the others,” Ratio murmurs to herself. She’s going to have to manually access the black box and retrieve the data later, although the chance that they’ll be able to recover anything from it is depressingly low.

“Can you get me my tools, Valence?” She gestures to the robot that has been standing next to the table from the start, watching silently. He nods curtly and goes to retrieve her toolbox. Valence is her partner, and they have been together for six months now. He is… special - a sentinel robot, although he must act indifferent and obedient while they are at the precinct: there are cameras everywhere, and he couldn’t be spotted behaving unnaturally for a robot. If they find out what he is, he will immediately be put out of commission. Ratio is the only one who knows the truth, and she has only found out by accident. By all means, she should have reported him to the authorities - a sentinel robot is a danger to society. But she was quite fond of him, and he saved her life - she just couldn’t do that to him.

He returns with her toolbox and opens it, starting to lay them out in orders on the side table while Ratio connects different cables to the decommissioned robot. She is able to boot it up, but the whole system has been damaged so terribly it can’t do anything but lighting up weakly. While the computer runs diagnostics, she starts the physical examination with Valence’s help.

Just like the other cases, no tools or weapons were used to attack the robot. All of the injuries are caused by blunt force trauma - although whoever or whatever that did it must have a significant, unusual strength, something at least equivalent to military-grade robot soldiers. Being a model built for housekeeping, the robot held no chance against such an attacker. The scratches on its faceplates point out that it must have been pinned down onto the floor or against a surface, before extreme pressure was applied on its back, crushing the spine and the parts inside the stomach. 

“What’s about the owner?” She asks Valence. They are definitely dead, she just wants to know how.

“The owner was found deceased in the kitchen. Reason of death: Stab wound in the abdomen and hemorrhage.”

“Run stimulation!”

“At approximately 11:42 pm, the attacker broke in through the second floor window. His wife was on a business trip, so the owner was watching TV alone in the living room. The SV-700-05 was cleaning the bedroom on the second floor, and was apprehended first by the attacker. It is concluded that it was an EMP attack - there were very minimal signs of struggle, and the robot was unable to contact the police in spite of an unauthorized intrusion. Drops of fluid lead downstairs, to the living room, suggesting that it was carried to the scene by the culprit for unknown reasons.” Valence reports, “The owner ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife for self-defense, evident by his fingerprints on the handle, but the culprit took the knife from him during the fight and stabbed him in the abdomen. The knife pierced the stomach and the liver, before being twisted by external force, causing fatal damage to the organs, and then pulled out, leaving the wound wide open. The victim bled to death in under five minutes.” 

“That was brutal,” Ratio winces, “What’s about him?” She gestures to the robot.

“...He was found 1,5 meters away from the victim’s body. Scratches on the floor indicated clear signs of violent struggles. It’s most likely that he watched his owner die while being pinned in place by the culprit, and then deactivated after.”

“Such bad taste,” Ratio wrinkles her nose in disgust, “They took his voice box?”

“Apparently so, as it is nowhere to be found in the house.”

Unidentified criminals are usually referred to by a nickname, especially serial killers. This one is no exception. Due to the extraordinarily brutal nature of his murders, as well as the theft of victim’s organs or robot parts as trophies, they are named The Collector. There have been 13 cases of human victims and 21 cases of robot destruction, but the police still haven't gotten any lead on this particular killer. The press, of course, goes wild with all the horror stories and conspiracy theories. It is widely believed that the killer is - or is aided by - a rogue robot: a special bot that can bypass the laws that forbid it from attacking humans and committing crimes. The production of such robots and machines are strictly forbidden by the government, but it’s still possible for an individual to create one if you have extensive knowledge of robotics and programming. 

It corresponds with all the data Ratio has gathered so far: blunt force injuries on the robot victims created by overwhelming strength, how easily the culprit broke in and disabled them, the corrupted data inside their memories and blackbox with their programming perverted beyond recognition, the violent crime scenes absurdly cleaned of any evidence that could potentially lead to the culprit. It’s simply impossible for a human to have done all of this alone, not to mention get away with it repeatedly in this day and age.

After several hours, Ratio finally finishes with the physical examinations and has Valence sent in her records. The robot has been leering at her for quite some time, and she sighs, knowing what he implies. “Alright, let’s go out for lunch, then I’ll start decoding the data we managed to retrieve from his blackbox.”

Valence beams at her. He doesn’t need to eat, he just wants to make sure she does. Her eating habit is - quoted Valence - “terrifyingly unhealthy, destructive, and shouldn’t be tolerated”. She’d have been very annoyed and ignored him totally if she wasn’t so fond of him. She has egg sandwiches for lunch - during which Valence tries and fails to bargain her into abandoning her large-size coke float due to its “dizzying” amount of artificial sugar - he literally said he felt faint looking at it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, fainting from emotions is something his body isn’t capable of doing as yet.

Ratio spends the rest of the day cranking out codes. The Collector uses a very unique method to corrupt the victim’s system. Whatever that program is, it seems unstable and changes constantly. There would be familiar traces left behind, but once Ratio starts to work on it, it unravels and twists into something entirely different and distorted. That is why when it appears right after a simple formula was used, Ratio is so shocked she must triple check it.

“Valence, can you come and take a look at this for me?” She says, pointing to a line of codes on the screen.

**[010000110111001001101001011101000110100101100011011000010110110001101001011101000111100100100000...]**

“It is the Binary,” Valence states.

“I _know_ that it is the Binary. Don’t you think it’s weird that between this jumbled, unreadable mess of codes something this precise and orderly can appear completely by accident?”

“You mean that it is a message from the culprit?” Valence hesitates, “But it makes no sense…”

“No, it makes no sense for it _to be there!”_

“Wait, there’s something else… I think these parts are numbers...” Ratio immediately follows Valence’s finger to where he’s tracing a lower line of code, “...3...75… They are coordinates!”

“Fuck!” Ratio swears, something that Valence would definitely have been upset about if he weren’t still in shock from their critical discovery. “Alert any officers that are close to that address! Let’s go!”

*****

When they get to the scene, a team of two police officers are already guarding it, but none of them can make out the meaning of what they found there.

Inside the isolated wooden hut, there isn’t a dead body. There is, however, a dozen of destroyed robots, dismembered and mutilated into perverted, sickening forms. Some of them look like they must have been there for years, rusting away and forgotten. Ratio maneuvers carefully around them, as to not mess up the crime scene. 

“Look!” Valence calls her, pointing to something on the wall. His voice is slightly shaken.

A single word is on the wall, carved with neat, clean, sharp lines, looking almost new. There are wood chips still littering the floor underneath. 

A single word.

The same thing that she found in the victim’s black box, in the form of Binary.

 **“CRITICALITY”**

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
